While I’ve never been in a band as personally and musically tight as the Dead, I have experienced the healing powers of music and togetherness courtesy of my father’s Irish ancestry. and Graham Nash I was making music with artists like Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Paul Kantner, David Freiberg, and Mike Shrieve, and working on American Beauty with the Dead.” Since the Dead were already enjoying a creative burst with their songwriting, the manifestation of collaborative immersion in American Beauty is most obvious in the exceptional care devoted to the arrangements, especially the vocal harmonies. The healing power of music is undeniable, but that power is enhanced to the nth degree when one shares the musical experience with others. At the same time as I was arranging to take over my mom’s support, I was playing on albums made by David Crosby. In addition to the tight bond formed by the band, Wally Heider’s recording studio proved to be the perfect place for collaborative immersion: “Some of the best musicians around were hanging there during that period. With all its ups and downs, it’s an exhilarating experience to improvise-onstage and in life-with one’s fellow humans, who after forty years of living, working, disagreeing, and completing one another’s thoughts musically and conversationally, are connected by a bond that’s ‘thicker than blood,’ as Bob Weir likes to say. The Grateful Dead has always been collectively dedicated to many ideals: family, community, freedom, risk-taking-but for me it was always the music. Early in his book, Phil describes the unique bond forged by the members of the Dead: The Dead dealt with the shocks by immersing themselves in the healing powers of music and collaboration. “By this time we were all in a state of extreme apprehension, metaphorically looking over our shoulders and wondering: What next?” The specter of death seemed to haunt the band: while playing a gig at Fillmore East they learned of the sudden passing of Jimi Hendrix a few weeks later, their show at Winterland was interrupted by the news that Janis Joplin had died of a heroin overdose, a death that hit much closer to home. Phil wasn’t the only member of the Dead dealing with parental loss Jerry Garcia’s mother also died during this period. The quote appears in Phil’s readable and insightful biography, Searching for the Sound: My Life with the Grateful Dead. Thank the Lord for music it’s a healing force beyond words to describe. The second quote relates to the emotional milieu surrounding the recording and comes from Phil Lesh, whose father suffered from terminal cancer and died near the end of the recording sessions: Having abandoned the however-long-it-takes orientation of their experimental period on Workingman’s Dead, the recording process consumed a total of three action-packed and emotionally heightened weeks. Even Pigpen joined in the fun with a solo composition. Of course, Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia led the way in that area, but Hunter also collaborated with Phil Lesh and Bob Weir on two equally superb songs and both Phil and Bob received songwriting credit for the album’s lead single. First, let’s hear from Jerry Reed:Īmerican Beauty was released a mere five months after Workingman’s Dead, in large part due to a collective songwriting hot streak. We’ll set the stage for this review with two quotes.
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